IRELAND AND HER COMMENTATORS. 613 



portment and industry, and the general correctness that characterizes 

 all their pursuits. Yet this is the county, and this the people, that 

 were goaded to madness by the tyranny of the Tory-supported 

 factions of 1798. This is the county distinguished by pitchcaps and 

 military torture, burnings and confiscations, and all the horrors of 

 civil war, superadded to the unbridled licence of Orange yeomanry, 

 and the scarcely less savage retaliations of the Catholic peasantry. 

 The testimony of Mr. Inglis respecting the superiority of the people 

 of Forth, and the neighbourhood is the best proof of the extent and 

 bitterness of the persecutions they must have endured, before they 

 appealed to force for a riddance of their grievances. 



By way of illustrating the intimate knowledge possessed by cer- 

 tain landlords of the state of their tenantry, Mr. Inglis was informed 

 that Mr. Lane Fox, who holds many badly managed acres in Water- 

 ford county, once visited his estates with his pockets full of beads, 

 little mirrors, and such toys as would be adapted for the South Sea 

 Island savages ! 



Waterford is much demoralized by the immoderate consumption of 

 whiskey. The expense of a license is regulated by the amount of 

 the rent of the house so that a premium is thus offered to the 

 lowest houses. Speaking of the condition of the very poor in the 

 town of Waterford, Mr. Inglis thus describes a scene in one of its 

 worst quarters : e< I found three or four families in hovels, lying on 

 straw in different corners, and not a bit of furniture visible ; the 

 hovels themselves situated in the midst of the most horrid and dis- 

 gusting filth." And yet Waterford contains a population of 30,000, 

 and is the third city of the kingdom. The noted Beresfords, of 

 fanatical and church-monopolizing celebrity, are the principal resi- 

 dents in the neighbourhood, but their pride is only augmented by 

 the sight of the wretchedness of creatures who prefer their own way 

 of going to heaven. Nevertheless, Waterford is an improving neigh- 

 bourhood, and the county, on the whole, by many degrees superior 

 to several others. Unfortunately, in the south and west of Ireland, 

 " bad, and less bad," is the only comparison that can be instituted 

 between one district and other. None of the towns and villages are 

 as well as they should be, or even so well as present circumstances 

 would permit. Waterford is less bad than Kilkenny, but what part 

 of that fine county is the worst, it would not be easy to say. Mr. 

 Inglis gives many pictures of agonizing privations endured by the 

 tenantry of Lord Clifden, in Callen, whom he describes as living in a 

 state little removed from earth-worms, or reptiles that .burrow in 

 holes, and drag out lives more wretched than a civilized being can 

 conceive it possible to endure. 



We cannot follow Mr. Inglis through the entire country. Every 

 fact he enumerates is of almost equal importance to the perfect form- 

 ation of a just estimate of the state of things in the sister kingdom, 

 which renders the work of selection 011 our part anything but easy. 

 We must, therefore, abandon details, which the volumes themselves 

 alone can satisfactorily supply, and glance at the remedies suggested 

 for the removal of evils, which, decidedly, will never correct them- 

 selves. 



M.M. No. 108. 4 K 



